Trump wishes royal couple well amid uncertain wedding invite

LONDON — President Donald Trump says Britain’s Prince Harry and his fiancee, American actress Meghan Markle, look like a “lovely couple” — though he doesn’t know if he’s been invited to their May wedding.

Trump also told Britain’s ITV News in an interview to be broadcast Sunday that his administration might not withdraw from the Paris climate accord if terms more favorable to the United States are reached, in part because he likes French President Emmanuel Macron.

The interviewer, veteran British journalist and friend of the president Piers Morgan, told Trump that Markle backed Democrat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election and has described the president as “divisive.”

“Well, I still hope they’re happy,” Trump said.

The interview was conducted Thursday during Trump’s brief visit to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. In excerpts released earlier by ITV, the president stopped just short of apologizing for retweeting inflammatory anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant videos originally shared by a British far-right political group.

The guest list for Harry and Markle’s May 19 wedding at Windsor Castle has not been made public.

The British press has been filled with speculation that Harry might snub Trump and invite former President Barack Obama as a wedding guest.

Trump also said he would take a “tougher” attitude toward Brexit negotiations than the approach now being used by British Prime Minister Theresa May.

“Would it be the way I negotiate? No, I wouldn’t negotiate it the way it’s (being) negotiated,” said Trump. “I would have had a different attitude.”

“I would have said that the European Union is not cracked up to what it’s supposed to be. And I would have taken a tougher stand in getting out.”

There have been public tensions between the two leaders, while Trump has angered many people in Britain with his policies and public attacks on London Mayor Sadiq Khan. A promised state visit to the country has been put on hold as officials grapple with the likelihood he would face widespread public protests.

In a brief appearance Thursday with May in front of reporters — their first since he canceled a trip to London to open the new U.S. Embassy there, blaming the Obama administration for selling the old building for “peanuts” — Trump said the two leaders like “each other a lot.”

Trump also seemed open to revisiting his pledge to withdraw from 2015 Paris climate accord if the deal could be substantially revised. Under the pact, nations set their own goals to reduce the emissions of heat-trapping gases. Because of legal technicalities America can’t get out until November of 2020.

“If somebody said, go back into the Paris accord, it would have to be a completely different deal because we had a horrible deal,” Trump said in the interview.

“Would I go back in? Yeah, I’d go back in. I like, as you know, I like Emmanuel (Macron). I would love to, but it’s got to be a good deal for the United States.”

Trump said the climate has been cooling as well as warming and asserted that ice caps have not been shrinking as predicted.

“There is a cooling, and there’s a heating. I mean, look, it used to not be climate change, it used to be global warming. That wasn’t working too well because it was getting too cold all over the place,” he said.

“The ice caps were going to melt, they were going to be gone by now, but now they’re setting records.”

However, those remarks don’t quite match what data shows and scientists say. The world hasn’t been cooling except for normal day-to-day weather variations; it has been just the opposite. And there have been far more records for shrinking ice on the top and the bottom of the world than growing, despite what the president claimed.

“Clearly President Trump is relying on alternative facts to inform his views on climate change,” Rutgers University climate scientist Jennifer Francis told the AP via email.

In a wide-ranging discussion Trump also confirmed he sometimes tweets while in bed and said he’s not a feminist.

“No, I wouldn’t say I’m a feminist. I mean, I think that would be, maybe, going too far,” the president said. “I’m for women, I’m for men, I’m for everyone.”